Federal Surveillance Tech Becomes Mandatory in New Cars by 2027 | Hacker News Reader

Federal Surveillance Tech Becomes Mandatory in New Cars by 2027

gadgetreview.com

79 pointsfunctionmouse48 comments

There's a ton of bad reporting here, because the publications, or writers, are lazy about sourcing their reporting.

In this case, there is a kernel of truth: The 2021-2022 "Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act" (https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3684...) directs NHTSA to develop an in-vehicle driver system to detect some definition of impaired driving.

In particular, "SEC. 24220" (searchable by that string in the above bill text.) directs NHTSA to either write and publish a rule implementing such, or make a yearly report to Congress as to why said technology is not implementable.

This is the 2026 report: https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2026-03/Report-t...

In essence, they state that while they have prototypes, the technology is not yet sufficient. There's nothing in a proposed or final rule yet, to the best of my knowledge.

Personally, I'm wary of this type of rule-making, as it essentially remains 'hidden' from public comment until the notices of final rule-making, making it in my eyes an end-run around the Administrative Procedure Act. I don't expect that to be a very widely held position though.

(Edit: I linked the 2023 report first, not the 2026 one. Whoopsy.)

Apparently nobody bothered to stop and consider how little sense this article makes, if the comments are any indication.

If I'm reading that correctly, they intend to do this as soon as it become possible. Not very reassuring.

Hypothetical. I'm in my rural California home late on a Friday night, having finished a bottle of wine and ready to go to bed when I suddenly realize a wild fire has started near my home, does my car let me escape this natural disaster?

GP said there is no rule yet, so the answer is “today, yes.” If you’re asking about the future, the answer is “to be determined.” But I think you knew that.

Pardon my ignorance, what is GP? If you have other sources please share, I only read this article, which bluntly states "Your current vehicle stays surveillance-free, but shopping for a 2027 model means accepting this digital copilot.".

GP=Grandparent.. the comment above the comment on yours.. but there is none.. so I guess we can assume article? There are better ways to phrase like "the article" or even "OP" (Original Poster - assuming poster & author are the same). This isn't a reputable domain though, so probably time to move on.

I figure OP stands for "original post", not "original poster".

Sorry, I was referring to @vetrom’s comment. I got mixed up on who was replying to who.

It doesn't even have to be that convoluted. Any sudden dangerous situation: natural disaster, break in, medical emergency(positive or negative what about a baby being born) where a car is the only solution and a reasonable, but inebriated, person makes the better of two bad decisions is going to need an override. I don't want to be pessimistic but this really seems like the sort of thing where a few people will die, lawsuits will happen, congress will mandate an override/make it optional, it'll be gone in maybe 10 years. It's madness but seemingly this is how things are done.

More likely is that very expensive cars will have an override switch and cheaper cars won't.

If I received the car for free from my government, I would consider accepting these terms. Otherwise, this is a huge not interested.

You are going summon the Strongtowns fans here: "well actually..."

Good call

Note, though, that you do receive the roads that make your car useful for “free” (taxes) from your government.

Pretty common in my area to drive from one house to another or house to farm without ever hitting a tax funded road.

That’s surprising. Do you all grade it, maintain the bridges, add gravel, and plow the snow yourselves? Does the USPS have no issue with delivering mail via private property? Do you still not have 911 service? (In rural Missouri we got 911 service in the 90s...) Do kids take the bus to school?

Or if you mean that you're driving through fields to visit a neighbor (during favorable seasons and no recent rain) rather than take roads, doesn't opening and closing all the gates in the fences slow you down?

>Do you all grade it, maintain the bridges, and plow the snow yourselves?

Yes. Including the bridges which was done diy, lol. I have all my own road maintenance heavy equipment and fix the roads if they get bad. And yes i mean a real road network. Basically my entire 'town' is private road easements without any government or even HOA/ psuedogovernment administering them, there are not gates to open or close.

>Does the USPS have no issue with delivering mail via private property?

USPS won't come here. UPS and FedEx does though. I have no government mail service.

Kids can get to a school via bus but you would have to park at the interface between private roads and the nearest public road. Bus won't drive on our private road network. You can get to some schools 100% by private roads, depends on which one.

Western Australia is similar - three times the land area of Texas and large areas of "private" roads - Minesites, Wheatbelt (both have their own private rail systems in addition to road ways and open fields / oterwise off road).

There are fleets of vehicles I'm aware of that rarely, if ever, hit tax payer funded public roads or rail.

These fleets include graders, dozers, rollers, et al for private road maintenance.

These are real, your skepticism is understandable but not applicable.

In parallel with private vehicles on private roads there are also public roads upon which school buses travel (assuming kids don't just off-road it to school on a motorcycle or, still today, a horse).

Note that the actual law[1] doesn't say how impaired driving is to be automatically detected. It could be something like requiring the driver to wiggle the steering wheel in a certain order before the car will go anywhere. Or it could passively monitor the driver for sudden braking or swerving out of the lane.

We'll have to see how the regulators interpret it.

[1] - https://www.congress.gov/117/plaws/publ58/PLAW-117publ58.pdf

If you drive with your phone on that'll be all they need.

You could turn the phone off and put it in a Faraday pouch.

Business idea: Faraday headwear, so that the tinfoil hat can store the phone. For that fashionably paranoid person in your life.

Those who believe in routine drinking and driving will surely buy a gadget to let them bypass this device with a fake breather that also outputs some natural-grade vapor.

Sweet, free money for car manufacturers to charge cost + a profit, then a double dip for their insiders when they sell delete kits.

sorry for disagreeing with everything on social media, but...

in my experience it's actually a bad thing for industry to add very specific requirements for them to follow

isn't this already possible via a breathalizer?

(This article was clearly written with LLM assistance. Is this still worth pointing out? Or should we just accept it at this point?)

Over time we stop engaging as there is less and less actual information and more and more attention engineering at play. Then someone will make a space with real information again and we’ll all move there.

It's worth pointing out so the rest of us can more quickly make an informed decision not to read it.

This is a very dishonest, clickbait, bullshit claim. It’s a safety system, no one is spying on you.

Many vehicles, IIRC including Teslas, already have this safety feature.

> If the AI determines you’re impaired (blood alcohol ≥0.08% or showing fatigue), it can prevent ignition startup or limit vehicle speed.

Tesla does absolutely nothing like this. The closest things are that it'll kick you out of AP/FSD if you're screwing around with your phone, and it'll advise you use AP/FSD if you're driving manually and pinging between lane lines.

I’m talking about general attention tracking, but this is still just an extension of that and not “surveillance.”

It’s also a hypothetical at this point because the system doesn’t exist, and there’s no consensus about whether it’s “fail open,” vulnerable to a centimeter square patch of electrical tape, or if it can randomly brick your car when it has errors. I would bet on the former.

You'd certainly hope that manufacturers conclude bricking a car when this system doesn't work is an unacceptable level of legal exposure.

Oh and Telsa already detects fatigue[1], which is a form of driving while impaired, so yes it does do something like this.

[1] https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_eu/GUID-65BF21B...

> it'll advise you use AP/FSD if you're driving manually and pinging between lane lines.

> Many vehicles, IIRC including Teslas, already have this safety feature.

That makes it worse, not better. Contrary to popular belief, "$BAD_THING is widespread" is not a defense of $BAD_THING.

What is the $BAD_THING about a simple warning to help drivers who are operating heavy machinery while impaired?

You should read the article first.

I already read the article. You are saying

> Contrary to popular belief, "$BAD_THING is widespread" is not a defense of $BAD_THING.

in response to my pointing out that Tesla does something like this now. So I'm asking: why do you believe that Tesla alerting drivers that it looks like they're driving while fatigued is a $BAD_THING? Your stance seem to be a nonsensical knee-jerk reaction against a simple safety feature, so I'm trying to understand your thinking. Do you also oppose anti-lock brakes?

You should read the article. Also you should pay more attention, I wasn't saying that, you're responding to a wrong person.

> a simple warning

The technology that the NHTSA wants to mandate as soon as it is commercially available is not a warning, but "prevention". From the NHTSA report, page 3: "prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected" - https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2026-03/Report-t...

I don't know anything about Teslas - you were the one that wrote "Many vehicles, IIRC including Teslas, already have this safety feature". The $BAD_THING I was talking about is the one in the NHTSA report. I took you at your word that the two "safety features" were the same. My mistake.

It's not even required by 2027. The title isn't true. The 2027 deadline is for a standard to be created. The tech won't make it into cars for years after that.

They do not, nowhere near what PL 117-58 specifies. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47383562 .

I agree that it's worth understanding that the law does not ask for any of this information to leave your car, so "federal surveillance tech" is a bit exaggerated. I have an unimpressive Honda Accord, and it will ding and display an alert if it suspects I'm drowsy.

But this law would step beyond that. It does require that the car "prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected."

I'm not a transit safety expert, but that itself seems potentially dangerous - even just limiting speed, if it happens on a highway, could be difficult to handle. And of course, the detection systems will have false positives.

Since the rules don't seem to be in any real form of finality and the government largely exists at the pleasure of corporations these days, I am skeptical that Big Government is going to suddenly be forcing Elon to brick your CyberTruck if you have an imperial IPA.

My prediction is that, in the end, this is simply going end up being a system to steer you off to the side of the road if you pass out at the wheel.

Really? Are you really this naive? Or just pretending to be?

Slippery slope or have we been saying that since seat belts

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